Château Lassègue

Taking the road that winds from the bottom of Saint-Emilion to Saint-Etienne-de-Lisse, on the hillsides of Saint-Émilion, a little off the road, trees hide this fine late-17th-century chartreuse, flanked by two Périgord-style towers. Château Lassègue was born under good auspices and long belonged to one of the oldest families of Libourne, the Belliquets. Between 1559 and 1753, five of them were mayors and sixteen were jurats. Their successors, the Freylon family (Jean-Pierre Freylon being a viticulture expert to the court of appeal in Bordeaux), succeeded in preserving this exceptional vineyard of the Saint-Émilion appellation. Château Lassègue has enjoyed a new life since 2003 thanks to the passion of two couples: Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke, Californians and visionaries in the wine world, together with Pierre Seillan, winegrower and winemaker, in charge of premium wines at Jackson Family Wine, and his wife Monique. Men of the land, Jess Jackson and Pierre Seillan were seduced and convinced by the exceptional terroir of this cru. First of all, the diversity of the soils and subsoils : from the high clay-limestone slopes down to stony and sandy clays, the slopes of the vineyard ensuring natural drainage. Then a privileged situation : the vines are sheltered from the north, with a south and south-west exposure, allowing optimum sunshine. Having spent years in different climates tracking down the best expressions of grapes and terroirs, they knew that everything lies in precision, from the vineyard to the cellar, and they gave themselves the means to achieve it.
The micro-cru division made it possible to determine the number of small vats needed to isolate the lots by soil quality and by grape variety. This multiplication of lots makes it possible, at blending time, to optimise the richness and complexity of the wines.
Three grape varieties, about ten soil types and a vat room that respects this diversity: these are as many blending possibilities, which are obviously the key to quality, today and for decades to come.
Ageing in barrel is the work of a goldsmith; a selection of the best French oak is made beforehand thanks to privileged relations with a Vosges stave mill in which the Jackson family has invested.
Wine men with solid experience and lovers of the Right Bank, they understood that they could bring to birth or rebirth at Lassègue a great Saint-Emilion wine, achieving the complexity, finesse, elegance and the inimitable silkiness of tannins that characterises it, as the Lassègue vintages have shown since their arrival.
Pierre Seillan puts it this way : ” no protocol, no charter, only the soil must express itself and one must capture the messages of the earth ; a multitude of wines with different exposures and soils lead us towards a symphony where the basses and the trebles have different rhythms; the composer is the earth and I am only the conductor “.